World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Review in Progress
Most recent World of Warcraft expansions started with a tightly scripted, story-heavy, and somewhat bothersome on-rails scenario. Dragonflight seems to have remembered that this is an MMORPG and I should be deciding what kind of adventures I want to go on. Right off the boat onto the expansive, beautiful Dragon Isles, you'll be met with only minimal handholding and four huge, new zones to explore. It's like Blizzard finally learned to trust us to find the fun without supervision, and they're letting us have the run of the world again. I still have a lot of this expansion left to play, but it’s already so refreshing.
As of now, I've leveled from 60 to 67 and quested through two of Dragonflight's four major zones. They really fly by – pun intended – which is a bit of a disappointment. I'm much more of a, "The journey is more important than the destination," kind of player than one who thinks the "real" game only begins at max level. The new talent points I've earned along the way have definitely helped my characters come into their own, though. I feel like I understand so much better where the combat designers were going with specs like Marksmanship Hunter and Preservation Evoker now that I have a more complete toolkit to work with.
These zones are downright gorgeous, too. The contrast between volcanic wastelands and verdant river valleys in The Waking Shores is a breathtaking introduction to the expansion. And it features some of the best side quest writing I've seen in WoW in a long time. One of my favorite quests involved sitting and listening to a red dragon, shapeshifted into a humble dwarf, talk about all his regrets and the pain of being banished from his homeland for 10,000 years.
Another one I loved involves
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